robotwarsfandomcom-20200215-history
Rear-hinged flippers
Rear-hinged flippers are the more common of the two types of flipping weapon seen in Robot Wars. They first appeared in Series 3, with Chaos 2 using this weapon to dominate the series on its way to becoming the series champion, and Facet also achieving some degree of success in its Heat with a similar weapon. Prior to Chaos 2 and Facet's first appearances, most rear-hinged weapons seen in Robot Wars were lifters. As the show progressed, flippers became more powerful, to the point that they were easily able to flip House Robots over and throw other competitors at great heights or out of the arena. The most notable robots with a rear-hinged flipper are Series 3-4 champions Chaos 2 and 2016 series champion Apollo, with others such as Wheely Big Cheese, Bigger Brother, Spawn Again, Dantomkia, Gravity, Bulldog Breed and Eruption also becoming famous for their flippers over time. A variety of rear-hinged flipper, the rear-hinged flipping arm, first appeared as early as Series 2, with the first robots to feature them being Chaos and Mace. Other successful and notable robots equipped with this weapon type include Hydra and the clusterbot Gemini. Definition *'Flippers' aim to propel another robot and allow gravity and torque to flip the robot over. This contrasts lifting weapons, which aim to lift, push and tip a robot onto its back or side. **A true flipper is defined as a flipper designed to get the entire mechanism underneath its opponent. The surface area of the flipper is much bigger than that of a flipping arm. **A flipping arm is typically narrow in width, but extends the same length as a true flipper. It usually features a prong or small wedge on the end to help get under opponents and an extender to provide additional leverage. *The weapon is considered rear-hinged because the hinges are at the top of the robot (usually at the top of a wedge or the end of a box-section). When the robot fires its flipper, it gives the impression that a robot is opening its "mouth." Advantages and Disadvantages Advantages *These kinds of flippers are ideally suited to throwing other robots out of the arena. Chaos 2 was the first to prove this capability in its Series 3 Grand Final eliminator against Fire Storm, with others such as Wheely Big Cheese, Dantomkia, Gravity and Tsunami all earning fame later on for their ability to do this. **Gemini was the only robot to demonstrate this using a rear-hinged flipping arm, with both halves teaming up to flip The Creature over the wall during their Series 4 battle. *Both variants of rear-hinged flipper can easily double as a self-righting mechanism depending on their design and power. Chaos 2 was the first to do so successfully, in its Series 3 Heat Final against The Big Cheese, and nearly all robots with these weapons were capable of self-righting without the need for a second weapon or srimech. *They are possible to fit into an invertible design, as shown by Wheely Big Cheese and St. Agro. *It is possible for these types of flipper to double as a clamp, increasing the weapon's versatility by allowing it to grab hold of opponents positioned in the space between the flipper and the robot's body. This was the reasoning behind the weapon designs for Eric, Reactor and Constrictor, and has been successfully demonstrated by Bigger Brother and Apollo in combat. *They are the most effective knock-out weapons at the start of battles, as they can easily eliminate opponents by throwing them onto their backs or out of the arena. This was proven in Ripper's three-second immobilisation of Daisy-Cutter in Series 7, and Gravity's six-second defeat of Dantomkia later on in the same series. *Depending on their power and the force of their flips, rear-hinged flippers can cause major internal damage to opponents once they land on the arena floor. Apollo was able to immobilise both Kan-Opener and PP3D by launching them with such force that their landings knocked out both robots' removable links. The landing force was also critical in both Apollo and TR2's victories over Carbide, whose weapon stopped working upon impact with the ground. *Rear-hinged flippers, like lifters, could easily offer a useful weapons synergy with overhead axes or hammers. Comengetorix and Hydra were a handful of robots to pair flipping arms alongside their overhead weapons, while Axe-Awe and later versions of Iron-Awe combined their axes with a larger front flipper. *Rear-hinged flipping arms offer an additional advantage over full-sized true flippers, in that they require less power to operate and are capable of landing more flips depending on their CO2 or compressed air supply. Disadvantages *They are often fragile and vulnerable to being damaged by axes, hammers, crushers, or heavy rotating weapons. For example, Chaos 2's flipper sustained significant damage from Razer, Killerhurtz, Dominator 2 and 13 Black at various points in its career, either to its pneumatics system or the flipper itself. **Rear-hinged flipping arms are especially susceptible to breaking off after a few flips or being damaged by spinning or crushing weapons. Both Comengetorix and Oblark suffered from this issue in at least one of their battles. *Most flippers rarely offer damage potential, and their effectiveness was decreased once self-righting mechanisms and invertible robots became more popular. Tornado, having lost to Chaos 2 in Series 4, went on to defeat it twice in Extreme 1 and later won battles against other rear-hinged flipper-wielding robots such as Anarchy, Raging Knightmare and Gravity. *Being narrower, rear-hinged flipping arms are harder to get underneath an opponent than full-sized flippers, often missing their targets and requiring skillful driving to flip them over. George Francis particularly cited these weaknesses as being detrimental to Chaos' performance in Series 2. *As with all other pneumatic weapons, CO2-powered flippers only have a limited supply and amount of flips before running out of gas. Having unsuccessfully flipped Tough as Nails around the arena in its Series 7 Heat Final, Robochicken's flipper lacked the power to throw it out of the arena when it was finally in a position to do so. *Compared to other types of flipping weapons, rear-hinged true flippers are the least effective for self-righting due to the increased amount of leverage required. Furthermore, their limited gas supply also prevents them from self-righting when the supply runs out. Robots such as Chaos 2, Thermidor 2, Tsunami and TR2 all notably succumbed to defeat once they became low on CO2, and were unable to use their flippers to self-right after a certain amount of flips. **Flipping arms can be even less capable as self-righting mechanisms, depending on the robot's design. Due to various issues with the design of the robot or their arms, Chaos, Mace 2 and the Series 6/Extreme 2 version of Hydra were all unable to self-right after being flipped over. *When the flipper is opened, the robot's internals could be left vulnerable to front-on attacks from spike, spear, crushing or spinning weapons. This was best shown in Stealth's Series 3 battle against Hypno-Disc, where Hypno-Disc destroyed the pnuematic rams powering Stealth's flipper when the weapon was fully raised. List of Robots with Rear-Hinged Flippers Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots that are not heavyweight are listed with a green background. Category:Weapon Types Category:Robots with Rear-hinged Flippers